What is the significance of gold

Additional words that represent different shades, tints, and values of the color gold: goldenrod, yellow gold, honey, bronze, copper. Sign up to get new our latest posts and announcements delivered straight to your inbox. As founder of Bourn Creative, Jennifer is an award-winning designer who has been working in the branding and design trenches since Today she consults on brand development, website strategy, and content strategy, works closely with clients on graphic design and web design projects with WordPress as her platform of choice.

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Arguably, gold is one of the only substances on earth with all of the qualities for the job, including sustainability. A chunk of gold may have no immediate physical value to the person holding it; they cannot eat or drink it, for example.

But if society agrees to turn gold into coins into a system of exchange for goods, then that coin would instantly assume a value. What was originally inedible could become a wagyu steak dinner, for example. Because others believe that gold has value, you do too; and because they think that you value gold, others value it too. From an elemental perspective, gold is the most logical choice for a medium of exchange for goods and services.

The metal is abundant enough to create coins but rare enough so that not everyone can produce them. Gold doesn't corrode, providing a sustainable store of value , and humans are physically and emotionally drawn to it. Societies and economies have placed value on gold, thus perpetuating its worth.

Gold is the metal we'll fall back on when other forms of currency don't work, which means that gold will always have value in tough as well as good times. Metals Trading. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for Investopedia. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data.

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Table of Contents Expand. Gold's Essential Dichotomy. Gold, The Feel-Good Metal. In Search of a Metal to Worship. Gold, The Mysterious Metal. Gold, Psychology, and Society. The Bottom Line. Key Takeaways Since ancient civilization, from the Egyptians to the Inca, gold has held a special place of actual and symbolic value for humanity.

Gold has moreover been used as money for exchange, as a store of value, and as valuable jewelry and other artifacts. Gold's value is ultimately a social construction: it is valuable because we all agree it has been and will be in the future. Still, gold's lustrous and metallic qualities, its relative scarcity, and the difficulty of extraction have only added to the perception of gold as a valuable commodity. Something about the warmth of gold speaks to our human need for comfort and nurture.

Compare Accounts. Liturgical equipment was made out of gold La Niece Janes, in his book God and Gold in Late Antiquity, has shown the continuity of the use of gold, and its numerous associations with the numinous, from a pre-Christian to a Christian world. Gold retained its importance even within a religion that upheld poverty and the rejection of worldly goods Janes Liturgical vessels, reliquaries, crosses, objects needed for performances of sacred rituals were made in gold.

There is also a long tradition of votive offerings, for example in the shape of tablets that were made in precious metals, gold or silver, and dedicated to a divinity; again, we see continuity from pre-Christian to Christian customs.

The close association of gold and the divine, the gods, can thus be observed in many different aspects, even if a precise definition of how this link worked and what it meant remains difficult.

Religion and magic share the connection with another world. Thus, magical rituals are intended to force the divinity or spirits, or otherworldly forces to act as desired, if only the prescribed magical rituals have been fulfilled correctly. The distinction between religion and magic is not always clear-cut as, within religious rituals, we find many magical components.

Gold was important in magical rituals. For example, it mattered when making amulets. Golden amulets were perceived as protecting primarily children against harm and curses, and especially the evil eye, according to Pliny Natural History 33, 25; Rackham trans Examples are the golden bullae that Roman boys wore.

Gold was also effective against various illnesses Pliny, Natural History 33, 25; Rackham trans On magical papyri that were dealing with curses but also with love charms, it is often demanded that the formula should be written on a gold tablet.

One underlying idea appears to be that gold has an inherent quality what Seligmann called Stoffheiligkeit that is potent. We also find evidence for the idea that the craftsman implanted its potency into the gold object during the process of its making. The written evidence for the beliefs into special qualities of gold and golden objects, and their links to a numinous sphere, is quite diverse and sometimes indirect, but can be supported by observations of archaeological finds, their find circumstances and decorations.

These rituals may include making the object unusable or destroying it deliberately, depositing it in inaccessible places like lakes or wetlands, or burying it in hoards that were composed of selected items in a pattern that is repeated in other hoards.

Examples are the series of precious-metal hoards in migration-period Scandinavia, that vary in size and, according to size, appear with very specific assemblages. That is why they are not regarded as temporary treasure-hiding places, but as sacrificial hoards that were meant to stay Hedeager It is often not possible to decide unambiguously whether a find had a religious motivation, like a sacrifice or votive offering, or a magical intention, like the attempt to enforce a response, a favourable reaction from the spiritual world.

Common to both, religious or magical, was the belief that it was possible to connect with another world through material objects and rituals associated with them. Another aspect is the images or ornaments with which golden objects were decorated, and that were also sometimes interpreted as powerful means of communication. Here the combination of image and material is perceived as reinforcing the desired effect as, for example, Maguire has argued in his discussion of the perception of coins with the imperial head as magical amulets that were used in Byzantium Are these - briefly sketched - observations about the use of gold in religious and magical contexts relevant for research and interpretation of the gold objects from the Staffordshire Hoard?

Can considerations that gold was believed to have characteristics or qualities that allowed communication beyond the human sphere contribute to its research? They are attempts to study the different stages in the life of an object: its manufacture, uses, meanings, and changing uses and meanings over time.